Robin Trower
Robin Trower would normally be considered a rock guitarist, but when you listen to his music, you can hear the 'Blue' underneath all of it. I was lucky enough to see Robin live back in about 1995 or 1996 at a local club that is long gone called Cadillacs. I only have one Robin Trower CD, but I love every song on "Bridge of Sighs." I might have to look into some of his newer stuff...
Thinking Out Loud – All Grain Brewing
My re-entry to the home brewing hobby has come with a lot of reading and studying concepts. When I brewed in the past, I always made malt extract recipes and used some minor grains by steeping them for 30 minutes or so before the boil. I never challenged myself to consider all-grain brewing. I think I had convinced myself that extract brewing was good enough, and didn't care to spend the extra time and effort to work with all-grain recipes. Extract brewing does make excellent beers, but I'm beginning to realize that truly fantastic beers can be made by all-grain brewing. I have been trying to come up with a pros and cons list of moving into all-grain brewing, and here is what I have come up with so far:
Cons:
- Additional time involved to mash grains (setup / mash / tear down / cleanup)
- Additional equipment costs (mash tun / grain mill)
Pros:
- Total control over flavor and details of the beer and the ability to create flavors and styles of beer that aren't easily achieved with extracts
- Creating an on-hand inventory of grains that can be crushed and used at any time
- Satisfaction of creating beer from raw ingredients rather than manufactured extracts
I don't currently have all the equipment I would need for all-grain brewing. In fact, I haven't completely acquired everything I really want to have for extract brewing. To complete my basic brewing kit, I need to build my immersion chiller and I need to buy at least one, and preferably two propane tanks to round off the complete brewing kit. The parts to build the immersion chiller and to get a filled propane tanks is going to be roughly $120. The cost of building a mash tun like I want and getting a Barley Crusher grain mill is going to be another $170. This is not really a lot of money, but it's more than I can spend today. I'll have to get it in pieces until I have everything I need. The propane tank and immersion chiller are highest priority at the moment. I hope to get those taken care of in February. Maybe March will allow me to get the rest. I also haven't searched Ebay yet for a used Barley Crusher...
When I get these materials together, I'll be rather complete in my equipment for home brewing. I don't have any additional needs. Home brewing is definitely a cheaper hobby than my photography hobby!
My First Apfelwein
This is my first ever batch of hard apple cider. It's called Apfelwein, and the recipe is rather simple. It contains 3 gallons of pure pasteurized apple juice (no additives or preservatives) and 1.8 lbs (28.8 oz) of corn sugar (dextrose). This is scaled down from the 5 gallon recipe which calls for 5 gallons of juice and 3 lbs of corn sugar because I only had a 3 gallon fermenter available for this project. The yeast used for this fermentation is a single packet of Red Star Montrachet yeast.
The original gravity of this mixture was 1.062, and if all goes well, it should ferment down to a gravity of about 0.998 which will yield an alcohol by volume of about 8.4%.
This recipe is directly attributed to "EdWort" over at HomeBrewTalk.com. This recipe seems to have made him famous there. In fact, today was named EdWort's Apfelwein Day in honor of the many gallons of this concoction that have been made since he originally posted the recpie. As of this writing, people on that forum had signed up to make just under a total of 1,000 gallons today.
Here is a mock up of a label design I created to put on a few bottles of this stuff when I get that far along...
The Apfelwein will probably be in the fermenter for at least six weeks. It should be in the bottle for at least four more weeks after that. From everything I have read, this stuff just gets better with time...
Joe Bonamassa
Joe Bonamassa is a newer blues artist who I have found to be quite amazing. I absolutely love a blues guitarist who isn't afraid to pick up a Les Paul instead of a Stratocaster. "You and Me" is the only CD I have from his collection so far, but after listening to it several times through, I'm sure I'll be adding more in the future...
Guinness Bread
I had another accident in the kitchen tonight that forced me to try something different. I was in the process of making another loaf of my beer bread when I knocked over my bottle of beer that I planned to use. I had nothing left but Guinness, and Guinness would not be my first choice of beers for bread. So, I switched up the recipe and came up with this new loaf...
Guinness Bread
3 cups self rising flour
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon onion powder
2 teaspoons caraway seed
pinch of salt
1 bottle of Guinness Draught
1/4 cup melted butter
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Add the Guinness and mix throughly. Transfer the batter into a prepared loaf pan. Drizzle 1/4 cup of melted butter over the top of the loaf and bake for 55-60 minutes.
I was worried about this bread tasting too bitter, but its not bitter at all. It's actually a very nice flavor and would be a perfect bread to serve with soups or chili.
Personalize your mug
I was browsing Homebrewtalk.com recently can came across a thread where one of the members had used Armour Etch to etch graduation lines and numbers on his 5-gallon glass carboy. I immediately wanted to do the same technique on my glass carboy, but after taking a closer look at the carboy, I realized that it's not smooth on the sides. It has ridges and doesn't lend itself well to doing this. After thinking about it some more, I decided to try it out on one of my beer glasses. I purchased a package of stick-on vinyl lettering and put the JMS letters on the glass. I used masking tape to form a box around those letters and then brushed on some of the Armour Etch paste. I let it sit for about 8 minutes and then rinsed it off with hot water and then removed the tape and letters. With a little creativity, I could probably come up with something on a glass that looks really nice...
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